What's In A Name?

Consider the most popular names in colonial New England:

GIRLS	BOYS
Abigail	Abraham
Abstinence	Adam
Anne	Amos
Ashes	Benjamin
Belief	Cotton
Charity	David
Chastity	Earnest
Comfort	Ebenezer
Constance	Eliab
Devotion	Elihu
Diligence	Ezekiel
Dorcas	George
Elizabeth	Humble
Esther	Increase
Eve	Ira
Faith	Isaac
Felicity	Isaiah
Godly	James
Goodwife	Japhet
Goody	Jedediah
Grace	Jepthah
Handmaid	Jeremiah
Hannah	John
Helpless	Jonas
Hester	Joseph
Honour	Luke
Hope	Malachi
Humility	Mark
Joy	Matthew
Justice	Micah
Leah	Michael
Love	Moses
Lydia	Naphthali
Martha	Nathaniel
Mary	Paul
Meek	Peter
Mercy	Resolved
Naomi	Samuel
Obedience	Saul
Patience	Seth
Pearl	Solomon
Providence	William
Prudence	Zachariah
Purity [Girls Only Hereafter]
Rachel
Rebecca
Repentance
Ruth
Salvation
Sarah
Steadfast
Thankful
Truth
Virtue

Thank goodness—for my sake—Dumbass is found nowhere in Scripture. If this (fair & balanced) nomenclature, so be it.

[x The Economist]
Moniker's progress
The names that parents give their children illuminate cultural evolution

Had Apple Blythe Alison Martin—the offspring of a celebrity couple, Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin—been born a boy, it is quite possible she would have had been given something of a more normal name. This suggestion arises from research into changing fashions in children's names, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society. Alexander Bentley, of University College, London, and his colleagues are studying the mathematics of cultural transmission. For this sort of work, birth records—which contain every instance in a country of one sort of cultural object, namely people's first names—are a particularly good source of data.

Dr Bentley looked at the frequencies of different first names in American babies. One of his findings was that the “mutation rate” in names is higher for girls than for boys. Parents, in other words, are more liable to be inventive when choosing a name for a baby girl. The researchers have found that for every 10,000 daughters born in America there is an average of 2.3 new names. For sons, the figure is 1.6.

Dr Bentley is not sure why this is the case. One possibility is that in a society where family names are inherited patrilineally, parents feel constrained by tradition when it comes to choosing first names for their sons. As a result, boys often end up with the names of their ancestors. But when those same parents come to choose names for their daughters, they feel less constrained and more able to choose based on style and beauty.

Such tendencies, however, do change with the times. Novelty in names, as defined by new names entering the list of the top 1,000 American names, was high for both sexes in the 1970s, went down in the 1980s, and then increased in the 1990s. This increase was especially notable in boys' names (eg, Jaden). During the 1990s, there were 184 new boys' names on the list, the largest number of any decade of the 20th century. Dr Bentley speculates that this may be because patriarchal naming customs are declining, and because Old Testament names (Jacob, Noah) are replacing those from the New (John, Paul).

Overall, the pattern of children's names resembles the mathematical pattern that would be produced by random copying. One consequence of this is that most names are found at low frequencies (Hannibal, Eustace, Phoenix). Only a handful (John, David, Christopher) are common.

Changes in frequency often seem to be random, too. There is, of course, a celebrity effect—which is why the world is blessed with more Britneys than it used to be. But that does not explain the rise of Tyler, which first appeared in the top 1,000 in the 1950s, and reached the top ten in 1992.

Though fashion in names is a particularly good example of the phenomenon, Dr Bentley is finding that random copying seems to drive many forms of cultural change, from patterns on ancient clay pots to preferences for breeds of dog.

For some, this is disappointing. Many students of cultural evolution hope to find analogies with biological evolution by natural selection, not just random drift, when they look at cultural change. Hence the appropriation from biology of the term “mutation rate”. There is even a word for what they hope will turn out to be the cultural equivalent of a gene. This word is “meme”. People's names and the patterns on clay pots would be good examples of memes, if such things do, in fact, exist.

All may not be lost, though. Non-randomness clearly exists alongside the basic random pattern. The celebrity effect, for example, works not only for names, but for dog breeds. Dalmatians became popular after the release of a film version of Dodie Smith's novel “101 Dalmatians”. Celebrity, therefore, seems to be one way for memes to gain fitness—and, crucially, one that benefits the meme (in the sense of allowing it to spread) without benefiting the individual transmitting it (no one has ever shown that possession of a particular name brings advantages).

However, celebrity is transient and familiarity does breed contempt. Today, Dalmatians—just like the name John—are far less popular than they used to be.

Copyright © 2004 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.